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One in five preschoolers overweight

ASHLEY HALL: One in five preschool aged Australian children are overweight or obese, and a high proportion of those children will have a television in their bedrooms.

That's the findings of a wide-ranging study by the University of Sydney.

The study's lead author says parents are getting confused with the sheer number of messages about healthy living and the majority believe their overweight child is the right weight.

The Australian Childhood Foundation says some parents don't even see that they themselves are obese.

Sarah Dingle reports.

SARAH DINGLE: It's not uncommon to see grossly overweight children in Australian schools, but now a new study from the University of Sydney has found one in five will turn up to their first day of kindergarten overweight or obese.

Lead author, Dr Louise Hardy, says more than a thousand children were surveyed.

LOUISE HARDY: So we're talking about five-year-olds, so that is definitely of concern. Basically what it does is it lays down the metabolic foundations for chronic disease risk later in life. So I think kind of one way to try and visualise it is if you think about the weight that gathers around your abdomen, think of that almost as like a doona that is slow cooking a lot of your organs in there.

So these children are, you know, having extra pressure put on their pancreas by having diets that are very heavily loaded in sugar, when they're loaded in fat they're starting, you know, to put down some foundations for cardiovascular disease later in life.

SARAH DINGLE: The study found overweight and obese boys were twice as likely to eat dinner in front of the TV three times a week, or more.

Overweight and obese preschool aged girls were twice as likely to have a television in their bedroom.

LOUISE HARDY: We've got about 30 per cent of five-year-olds with a TV in their bedroom. I'm not sure why that is, potentially it might be related with families upgrading their screens and then putting the older screen technology in a child's bedroom.

And it's not the TV that does it, it's the snacking that accompanies watching TV. So we're interested to know how many of the children actually meet the screen time guideline, which is less than two hours per day.

Now we also know, we asked parents what the guideline is, they had no idea.

LOUISE HARDY: For example a lot of people would think providing their children with a fruit juice is actually healthy, you know, the actual piece of fruit is what is healthy, you know with the actual fruit they get, you know, fibre and whatnot.

So it is confusing for them.

JOE TUCCI: A lot of parents still hold onto the idea that children who are a little bit overweight - that's healthy for kids because they'll use up that energy when they're growing, they'll need it for their own development.

That's just one of the myths, as an example that gets in the way of these positive healthy messages that need to get out there.

SARAH DINGLE: Joe Tucci is the CEO of the Australian Childhood Foundation. He says the fact that 70 per cent of parents with overweight kids thought their children were the right weight is not surprising

JOE TUCCI: It does sort of defy logic in a lot of ways but I think that parents are struggling not just about seeing it but also appreciating the consequences of their own behaviour.

Parents don't often see, for example, that they themselves are obese, they're not seeing that they are suffering from the consequences of some of these marketing activities. So it's very hard for them to discern that it's having an impact on their children.

On top of that I think parents often can feel like they're letting their kids down. So when they say I wasn't aware that my child's obese, I think they're also saying I don't want to have been implicated in the way that my child is growing up, you know, I don't want to cause them any harm.

SARAH DINGLE: Dr Hardy says there's a need for simple and repeated lifestyle messages targeting parents to create a healthier home environment, but without alienating them.

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